


come gather your ghosts

by afearsomecritter (jsaer)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Ghosts, Mandalorian Culture (Star Wars), Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-03
Updated: 2021-03-03
Packaged: 2021-03-15 17:35:43
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,004
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29811987
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jsaer/pseuds/afearsomecritter
Summary: In which Mandalore is extremely haunted and reluctant Mand’alor Din Djarin finds out the hard way.Din has been in lifeless places before. Moons, mostly, and the occasional large asteroid. One of his earliest bounties had been hiding on an empty moon, huddled in a tiny habitation dome.This is different.
Comments: 13
Kudos: 70





	come gather your ghosts

**Author's Note:**

> listen canon gave me a cursed planet and ghosts I couldn't NOT write a sort of horror story sort of character study after that. words in brackets are [in mando'a]

\---

There’s a ghost on the ship in bare beskar.

Za’ayic sees it first. It’s some unholy hour and he’s lost his battle with insomnia, retreating to the copilot’s chair to alternate between watching hyperspace streak by and reading a book on three hundred year old accounting methods. The latter was proving too boring for him to even pay attention long enough for it to put him to sleep. Benni had stepped away to the galley for a moment so when Za’ayic catches movement on his peripheral he glances up expecting to see an exhausted Togruta and instead sees someone in unfamiliar armor. 

The pad clatters on the deck and Za’ayic jerks upright.

“Who in the-” he starts to snarl. And stops. 

The armor was the familiar deep silver of unpainted beskar over a dark kute, both marked up enough to be well worn. There’s no reaction to Za’ayic’s cut off challenge, just an unhurried, utterly silent walk. There was something _wrong_ here and Za’ayic is backing up, wishing he had his blaster and why is he letting this person near the controls-

The cape shifts and there’s a hilt he knows out of years of reading during nights like this strapped to this person’s belt and Za’ayic can’t move and the helmet turns toward him and he and the not-person watch each other for a split second and then the not-person sits in the pilot’s seat and Za’ayic jolts and lunges-

The seat is empty. 

“Za’ayic?”

Za’ayic spins to see Benni holding two cups of caff. The Togruta raises an eyebrow marking at him, eyes flicking to Za’ayic’s white knuckled grip on the pilot seat.

“You okay?”

“....the ship’s haunted.”

It’s a joke at first, of course. Sleep deprivation and hyperspace can make for some strange sights in the middle of the sleep cycle. Then Rett nearly blasts a hole in the hull when a partially see through figure walks _through him_ one morning.

Encounters and echoes and glimpses abound as the shade goes about its business, unconcerned or unaware of the living verd on the ship. They see it in the cockpit the most often, wandering the decks the most often after that. It was curled in the starboard gun turret once, startling the _haran_ out of Dunn, who then finds a loose wire in the targeting array when running diagnostics to soothe the resulting adrenaline. 

A vengeful wraith, Keel whispers gleefully. A protective spirit, Dunn counters. An omen, Meryll mumbles. Mandalorian ghosts are rarely so silent. 

I think they're just sad, Benni will say. There’s no furious wails or shivering cries like some of the best stories but. Benni sees their ghost early one dawn, soft pink light suffusing the ship. The ghost had been perched on the pilot chair, facing the copilot and Benni had seen it half curled forward, helm tilting low in a keldabe kiss with no recipient.

I think they're sad, Benni will say.

The crew nicknames it Atin, [stubborn] little echo. The ship has a ghost for three months.

Then the ship is rusting in a junkyard, and there are no more ghosts.

\---

The planet is almost pretty from space if he ignores all the craters. 

White sandy plains and dunes rippling across the planet like an ocean, massive glassed craters glittering lakes spotting the surface. A map of city and town locations rendered in molten glass long since cooled.

Din drifts in orbit above Mandalore trying not to shift in the unfamiliar seat of his new ship. The New Republic had paid a pretty penny for a live Moff, enough to easily afford the sturdy, serviceable thing he piloted now. He likely could have found newer but he didn’t need much, never had. If he’d simply liked the look of the, probably older than him, transport that was his business. 

(and if this ship happened to have a bunk with a child sized recess in the wall that would be perfect there was no one there to comment on it-)

Din stares down at the Mandalore, hand unmoving on the thruster control. It’s absurd but he swears the saber strapped to his belt feels heavier the longer he stays in orbit and he doesn’t fucking _want this_ , doesn’t want a claim to a throne on a cursed planet for a scattered people he’s just a be-dammed bounty hunter and the one person who wanted it has refused to challenge him for reasons he doesn’t understand. He doesn’t understand much of anything, he’s finding. 

Din had said something to that effect to Fett, still reeling from the brief weight of his s- of his foundling in his arms. Fett had glanced at him with a slight tilt of his helmet more readable than Din found most faces.

“Becoming a father is like that, I’ve heard,” he’d said, and kindly ignored the sound Din made in reply. 

(the little metal ball weighs so much less than anything else he carries and he hasn’t held it for long but he thinks if it vanished from his belt he’d topple like a mooring line had snapped)

Din shakes himself and shifts in his unfamiliar new pilot seat, staring down at a dead planet.

“What do you think?” he asks the empty air behind him. There’s no reply. Mandalore spins between the stars and Din sighs and presses down on the throttle.

\---

Din has been in lifeless places before. Moons, mostly, and the occasional large asteroid. One of his earliest bounties had been hiding on an empty moon, huddled in a tiny habitation dome. He still remembers the eerie sensation of slowly realizing he was the only living thing on the moon after the bounty had been secured and he was checking the belly of the _Razor Crest_ after a rough landing. 

This is different.

The wind screams around the rocks, sand skating like a cresting wave over him as he settles his ship in the safety of the leeward side of the rock formation. The self same wind had buffeted the ship on the way down like it was trying to shove him from the planet’s surface. When he makes his way down the ramp the air is barely moving, thoroughly blocked by the formation of what on closer inspection seems to be glass. It couldn’t be called clear by any stretch of the imagination, utterly opaque and grit rough but there are places where the near perpetual sand blast from the winds have ground it smooth. 

He carefully traces the edges of one of said spots, wind a thin whistle through the gap in the formation. Scraggly bushes huddle in the crevices of the glass where sand has collected, their dusty grey-green leaves the only spot of color, of life he’s seen. 

Beyond this ridge was another, and beyond that was a crater. Din hadn’t tried too hard to find which city it used to be. He doesn’t understand why Bo-Katan wants this place where the wind feels like it’s trying to strip flesh from bone more than any Tatooine sandstorm he’s ever endured. This is an angry, empty, cursed place and he doesn’t know why she wants it. Doesn’t know why the fuck he’s here. 

(that’s a lie of course. his future was take- given away his present is his siblings metal skin in a sewer his creed shattered so here he is, walking through the graveyard of his people like he could build another future from the screaming air-)

The wind eats his footprints as he makes his way along the rim, grit grinding against the glass under his boots. Wind flung sand scrapes across his armor. When he looks down there’s dark shapes here and there encased below, wreckage of a city frozen in a molten wave. It reminds him of frozen lakes with creatures beneath, waiting with their big teeth. He snorts at himself, vocoder crackling. The wind snatches that away too. 

The setting sun begins to paint the sands in pinks and oranges, shadows darkening into deep bruise purples. He could have landed on a part of the planet not so close to evening, but this was the largest crater he’d seen while flying. It seemed the best place to-investigate, he supposed. Maybe see if he could figure out what all the fuss was about. 

He knows of the Purge, was young but alive during it. But it was an old, distant wound he’d only felt the ripples of. Been shaped by the ripples of. He’s never been to Manda’yaim itself before and there’s a vague sorrow lurking like an ache as he looks at what could have been a home in some other life. 

But.

It’s just a crater, larger and more brutal than the one that had taken the _Razor Crest_ from him, lives and home stolen instead of just the one. But it stays just a crater as he stands there like an idiot, watching the dark roll in like the tide. Cold comes with the sunset, biting through his flight suit as he stalks along the hills of sand collected behind the rims of the crater, heading back to his ship.

There is a difference between a lifeless place and a dead place. And Din knows kriffing well what corpses look like.

(this one is dead and _angry_ )

He stays the night anyway.

\---

New thing? New thing old thing heat notdeath thump thump _look the stars are falling_ new thing familiar metal clatter stomp _oya!_ should be a dead thing. Isn’t.

Thump thump not boots crrssshk yes boots on the g l a s s new thing notdead. Br ea thing familiar face, their face, everyone’s face (almost almost almost) stripped down not green purple orangeblueblueblue _dark_ bright beskar grey. Grey like the frozen ash in the- grey bared bones but beskar’gam. 

New thing dark dark dark splotch on the pale and glass everything. New thing. Step step crrrsssshk sand on glass not thud thud boot on metal _look the stars are fall-_ a ship a ship familiar the wind is slamming into it new thing old thing-

Oh.

(stop stop slow there is a living thing familiar face metal glass in the right shape l i ving thing alive hello you’re alive [you’re still alive] hello _su cuy'gar_ )

The living thing came in the new old thing (the _stars are_ -).

There are echoes in the old thing.

_Su cuy'gar_

\---

Din jolts awake to the sound of boots clattering on the lower deck. He scrambles silently to his feet, slamming his helmet on and grabbing his blaster, cursing himself for giving in to the sense of safety the ship had provided as the chill deck freezes his bare feet. 

He goes through the ship inch by tense inch, blaster at the ready and finds absolutely nothing. The life signs detector shows nothing either when he boots it up, the old system all but hissing at him as he wakes the ship. He stares at the empty screen, tapping his fingers against the console. 

The AIAT/i is an old ship, older than the _Razor Crest_ had been by at least a decade if not more. The junkyard he’d fished it out of had spotty records which was good enough for Din so long as the damn thing flew. And it does. It’s a bit big for just one pilot, just one man rattling around like a pebble in a drum but he’d liked the shape of it when he saw it. It felt familiar and well. He’d wanted that. 

(a little moment of weakness, just the one he tells himself like he has not gutted himself before strangers not a week ago, cracked open his own shell like the hunters always threatened to-)

It’s an old ship, Din reasons, even the _Razor Crest_ had the odd pops and clanks in the middle of the night, he just has to get used to the _Dawn’s Glory_ ’s chatter. 

…it really had sounded like footsteps though.

Din stares at the empty lifesigns screen before cursing himself for flights of fancy and hauls himself back to bed. He’ll leave this empty planet tomorrow, he thinks, and this time when he lays down he has his armor on.

(he dreams of soft laughter in the other rooms and conversations in mando’a and the faint scent of caff and none of this wakes him because it sounds like home, even as footsteps clatter again across the lower deck)

\---

New thing living thing theirs theirs theirs clinging re m n an t after the, after the- shape of beskar under not hands thud thud thud p u l se been so long empty screaming winds there are no other voices left to scream. 

The beskar is unpainted new bare _familiar_ insists an echo from the ship, glitter bright awareness flaring, a person for just a moment, familiar and safe _startled yelps caff a burnt wire stubborn little echo_. Good good good there is another thrum under a pulse of blood wending through meat under armor bright bright bright and another void between stars edged in starlight oh.

Wait.

Ruler crown of stars sword of stars new one who carries (the sky is _fall-_ ) past present future who is this you’re alive [you’re still alive] hello _su cuy'gar_

_[I r e m em b e r you-]_

\---

“[Who are you.]”

Din _does not_ shriek at the unfamiliar voice right by his kriffin’ ear. He does roll out of his bunk yanking his gun up to aim at-

Sand shifts beneath his boots and he nearly faceplants into the dune. 

“What,” he says flatly, blaster pointed at empty sand. Sand where his ship should be. Undisturbed, uncratered, empty sand. No ship. No person either. 

“.....the fuck.” 

Continued staring doesn’t produce his ship from this air and Din swears viciously in Mando’a, Huttese and snaps off a few invectives in Tusken for good measure. The sand continues to be empty. 

Dread starts to seep in like muck through fabric. His ship is gone _again_.

(go to the crater)

He backs up to the wall his ship had sheltered behind, glass cold even though his backplate and kute. It takes entirely too long to get his lungs under control as he listens to the wind howl. One of the little bushes scratches against his armor, sharp tips of thick leaves catching on the wave of his kute like tiny claws had-

Chill across his back, sand underneath his legs. His is on Manda’yaim, and his (could have been home perfectly sized cubby in the wall new places for his s-for Grogu to explo-) his ship has vanished. Someday, Din thinks distantly, he’s going to find who in the ka’ra has it out for him this bad. He shakes himself hard and sits up properly to take inventory.

Old habits means he has rations in his belt, means he slept in his armor after the midnight scare. He has his communicator on him, only strong enough to receive a signal but Fett knows where he was going, had watched him leave with a strange expression. Had laughed himself sick when he’d first seen the darksaber, the sound tinged with something too guttural to be hysteria but Din had been too busy bleeding to notice at the time. Fett had wryly offered his greetings to pass on to the ghosts.

(go to the c r a t er)

Din takes one last steadying breath before straightening. Dawn is creeping up behind him, lighting the tops of the dunes in pink gold. He has little to do until Fett contacts him, might as well explore. 

(g o to the c r a t e r)

Behind him sand patters against the hull of an unmoved ship.

\---

The first time Din ever hears about ghosts he is curled in the bunks with the other foundlings and his helmet is still just an unwieldy thing he wears sometimes. The story is heralded by a susurrus of hissed whispers, newly familiar language breaking over him like a wave in the dark.

(the whispers always halt, frozen, when an adult walks past the entrance before resuming with giggles. years later din will be the adult patrolling by, indulgently pretending his ears don’t work)

Snippets of tales of long dead people following travelers in the deserts of a dying world, helping or harming depending on how they were, how they died. Of warriors locked in battles repeated over and over from wars centuries gone, never knowing. Of all the great Mand’alor of ages past marching to the stars. 

“You’ve never heard of ghosts?” comes one whisper, seeing the confusion on his face. 

Din shakes his head. He doesn’t know the word and the concept is- wrong somehow. _People_ don’t haunt things, aren’t spirits, that’s other things. His momma had told him and his cousins stories about things that looked like people but weren’t and always wore-

(humans are very good at seeing faces and droids are droids but there is screaming and the droids don’t look like people but they do-)

Din shakes his head again, the rest of him shaking too. The kid across from him sees, big eyes shining in the dark. 

“Some of them are friendly,” the kid offers. A pause, quiet as the others start up again but Din isn’t listening to them. 

“Sometimes they’re family,” the kid says.

Din thinks of screaming, of hands clutching his, burning sparks, thuds. He doesn’t sleep that night, staring at the dark, some little part of him hoping until the lights come on and washes the ghost stories away.

(he doesn’t think about them after that)

\---

Hiking down the side of the crater involves more sliding than actual walking. Very careful sliding from jagged outcropping to jagged outcropping, cloak snapping wildly behind him whenever he enters an open space. The glass is sharper here, closer to the center of the impact but not yet to the center. Clearer too, for some reason, light fracturing and occasionally blinding him or forming strange patterns across the uneven ground. 

“Dank _ferrick_ -” Din snaps as he nearly sends himself into a crevice when what he thought was just a shadow was a damned _hole_. He catches himself when he trips, hand thrown out against one of the walls of glass and nearly falls again when an unseen edge slices through the leatheris of his gloves and pain blooms across his palm. Bright red blood smears the cloudy surface, bright red even through his visor. 

Din grimaces, tugging his glove off before digging though his belt for a small bacta patch. Bandage applied, he pulls his glove back on, and he’s resolving to be more goddamn careful the rest of the-the way down (why is he-) when he glances toward where he’d gotten the cut.

The blood is gone.

\---

The center of the crater is utterly still. It’s jarring, after hours of screaming wind. The quiet is so intense Din can hear the blood rushing in his ears. There are no dark shapes lurking under the glass down here, everything had either been vaporized or thrown outward.

(go to the-)

...why had he come down here?

The world

Flickers

There’s a person standing-

There’s peo-

There’s a person (armor cloth tall short broad thin overlapping over and over and over) standing in the crater. A helm stares back at him, chipped paint in a familiar grey blue. White outlines the visor. It is unsteady in a few places, dipping outside cleans lines, hard to see but there. 

(low voice laughing gently and guiding still small hands with blisters that aren’t yet callouses affection this is what these colors mean a casualty list in a language he’s still learning to read but he knows-)

_Su cuy'gar_ says his buir. The words enter his mind without ever touching his ears and Din doesn’t flinch through sheer force of will. The Mandalorian in front of him was decades dead and sut among the stars his buir was _dead_ his buir had-

(never said the adoption vows nothing official foundlings were the future of all not just some but-)

-been dead longer than Din had ever known them. 

_Su cuy'gar_ means ‘you’re still alive’, not just hello, he remembers learning, greeting relief acknowledgement bundled into a single word. But he can’t. He can’t say it back. 

The person in front of him shivers and distorts like a shuddering hyperdrive too many things trying to occupy one space visors catching the sun catching tears on bare faces teeth bared in snarls-

“What are you?” he asks, ice sheeting up his spine. The words fall between him and the figure(s) like stones into muck, heavy in the silence of the crater.

The not person _laughs_ screams talks _hello manda-the sky is falli-waiting hello the white fields all of mandalore is-the dark sab-atin atin do you recog-we remember you so you are-hello m a n d ‘ a l o r_ and Din is rigid, is not flinching the words wrap around in his skull imprint themselves across his eyelids blinking the light -look the sky is fa- blinking the spots away. 

“You didn’t answer the question,” he rasps. The hand holding his blaster doesn’t shake though he knows it would do nothing to the thing in front of him. 

The glass beneath him creaks like ice, timbering booms deafening.  
(there used to be ice on mandalore, and forests and plains and not-glass deserts but that was a very long time ago when-)

_Do you not know, Din Djarin?_ asks his buir. There is blood dripping down their chestplate from under their helmet. Dripping into the glass sand beneath their feet and vanishing like his own had. When he looks back up his buir is gone and there is a figure armor he knows from the Covert headless he’d only seen her helmet in that awful pile someone without armor burning a young togruta laughing with shattered limbs an old woman with her helmet under her arm drenching the sand in bright blood-

then there is a child there, pale faced and smiling and dissolving into ash and reforming over and over. 

Nausea and grief churns in his gut and Din thinks distantly of murdered futures. The visage of the child vanishes and his buir reappears, still bleeding nothingness into the sands of Mandalore.

“You’re dead,” he says. 

_Welcome home, Din_. 

(welcome home mand’alor rasps underneath, heavy like the saber still strapped to his belt)

“Buir.” Din’s voice cracks like it hasn’t since (a small clawed hand against his face)-since. He lets his blaster drop. He shouldn’t, but.

(there is a child there, the dead are there, starlight souls slagged to melted glass hundreds of thousands of futures stolen from these dead and no one left to-)

“You’re dead,” he repeats.

You’re _Mandalore’s_ dead, he means. 

_Yes. But you are not. Will you remember us, Din Djarin?_

(endless litanties of names [we remember you so you are eternal] murmured in the covert, a hum against his young ears when his own were two names he whispers over and over, tripping on his tongue until he is just crying mama papa and later later later he will have more names and they will catch glass sharp in his throat until time smooths them and this will happen again and again)

His buir (mandalore) watches him, helm tilted in curiosity. Waiting. 

He has a foundling waiting for him in the future and a past made of blood and empty sand. [No one cares who your father was, only the father you’ll be]. His bones were built in a covert made from tradition, endless hope for the future, beskar forged carried melted forged carried over and over, hope for the future clad in the armor of the past. 

Remembrance is a heavy thing. On Mandalore it is shaped like a crown.

(he has a foundling waiting for a future built on-)

“[I remember you, so you are eternal],” says the Mand’alor.

\---


End file.
